baseballstud24 wrote:
I'm not talking about throwing trash out the car window. I'm talking about major corporations all over the world pumping toxins and harmful gasses into the environment. Tell me that doesn't have a major impact on this planet.
Compared to the size of the planet, it honestly isn't all that much, particularly when nature itself has the ability to counteract much of what you're describing.
The earth is not a weak, defenseless entity that humanity must avoid damaging by walking on eggshells or reinventing the wheel of industry.
To put it in the words of one of my favorite authors, "The earth was here before we were, and it will be here when we leave."
Suggesting that the volume of those toxins and gasses is harmful is missing the forest for the trees.
When you look at them in a philosophical vacuum, they look like a large problem. When you add the context of comparing them to the volume of the earth, AND you factor in the robust nature of the earth, they become FAR less concerning.
For example, one of the big concerns for awhile has been CO2 emissions. However, when comparing man-caused CO2 emissions to naturally produced CO2 emissions, the man-made emissions look like MUCH less of an issue, because one can see that the earth has easily been able to withstand its own CO2 waste in large quantities for millenia. Thus, one realizes that while mankind might see its own CO2 emissions and think them overwhelming, when comparing them to naturally produced CO2, they are nothing.
At most, our pollution thus far has been a knee scrape on nature. Not a serious problem. That isn't to say we shouldn't keep it in check, of course. If you keep scraping the same knee over and over and over, you'll get to bone, and you will end up with bigger problems. I am all for many of the green efforts.
However, to suggest that we, a single species that the earth has sustained for a long time, can somehow destroy the natural hand that has fed us and sustained us is ludicrous.
